It seems then, that much like the high-pressure fluid injected to fracture our rock, mounting pressure from politicians and campaigners is creating cracks throughout Britain. Indeed, it is no longer just the 'Green Blob' that opposes fracking.

The truth is, we still do not know enough about the potential health, societal and environmental impacts of fracking. The government's gone all-out to win hearts and minds on fracking - assuring robust regulation and economic benefits. The reality looks quite different.

These people are on the frontline and these planning decisions represent a significant moment in the battle to stop fracking across the UK. If the Council refuses the application it will raise serious doubts on whether any community in the UK would have to accept an extreme form of fossil fuel extraction on their doorsteps and under their property.

Fracking is the sensible middle ground between preserving the environment and satisfying our energy needs. The industry is undeserving of the hysteria disseminated by opponents who threaten to jeopardise an energy source which is potentially beneficial to communities, the environment and consumers.

The Green Lobby should not be able to tarnish shale gas extraction in the UK with examples from a country with a wildly different regulatory regime, nor should the public be concerned that UK regulators are impotent bodies.

Last week's mid-term elections in the US underscored the importance of energy issues for the US electorate. Shale gas, the Keystone pipeline, the Clean Climate Plan and EPA carbon regulators were major electoral issues in many US States...

If opponents are really concerned about water usage and are not disseminating falsehoods for their own political gain, their efforts would be far more effective targeting more water-intensive industries.

The benefits to the UK economy of ensuring fracking commences sooner rather than later are pretty obvious. With the tensions in Eastern Europe showing little sign of subsiding, there are growing concerns over our energy independence in the long term, particularly with regard to gas.

In 2007 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the following: 'There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.' Last year, Thorsten Heins, CEO of BlackBerry said: 'In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.' There is a trend here which suggests that people are notoriously bad at predicting the future even in their own fields of expertise.

When countries set out their cases for energy independence, the main reason is generally cited as the need to ease reliance on oil and gas from unfriendly places. President Barack Obama's 'All of the Above' energy strategy for example, a plan that has seen this US administration extract more fossil fuels than any other, is very much predicated on the need to lessen oil imports from Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The current governmental landscape betrays a belief that it is possible to run with the hare and the hounds ad infinitum when it comes to energy, and this simply isn't the case. Giving with one hand and taking with the other not only demonstrates a disingenuous attitude that further belittles trust, it also harms investment and makes us less competitive on the world stage.

Russia pulled off a major diplomatic coup in November by inducing Ukraine to abandon its proposed association agreement with the EU, the consequences of which are currently being played out on the streets of Kiev. But it would wrong to assume that Russia now calls all the shots in relations with its ex-Soviet neighbour...

The government's "sweeteners", of 1% of shale gas revenues to local communities and handing local authorities all of the business rates arising from shale gas wells, can be seen as a financial compensation for the disruption fracking will cause locally. The introduction of climate change taxation would tackle the far greater global disruption that the climate effects of shale gas would otherwise bring.

This week's announcements on fracking, including David Cameron's pledge to "go all out on shale gas", triggered yet another shale gas frenzy in the UK media. Yet, despite all the hype and the announcement of better benefits for communities hosting shale gas projects, nothing has fundamentally changed when it comes to the likely impacts of shale gas on the UK's energy market.

Raising resource productivity will require a refocusing of industrial effort, capital allocation and innovation. Given time, this may happen on its own, but system change is hard, and there is plenty of inertia which keeps the economy linear.

Two countries, two approaches to shale gas extraction. Fracking has helped the US overtake Russia as the world's biggest natural gas producer. In France, however, the constitutional court ruled earlier this month that a government's ban on shale gas drilling was legal and not disproportionate.

The debate over fracking seems to have excited a great deal of people. It's an existential crisis at the heart of the Conservative Party. It will 'threaten God's glorious creation'. It will reduce energy prices. Or maybe not... Is fracking really such a contentious issue? Yes and no.

David Cameron needs to get away from the fantasy that fracking would lead to lower energy prices and stop using the US as an example. He should know that the gas market on the other side of the Atlantic is different than in Europe. Even if the UK was to extract large amounts of cheap gas from fracking, it would not lead to cheaper energy bills...